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Show HN: Offline voice messages transcription in Signal Desktop

191 points by dexterp37 4y ago

zuck9 4y ago
Texts.com supports offline audio transcription for all platforms. They say it's powered by Apple's speech recognition APIs.
artificialLimbs 4y ago
Hmm.. site blocked for phishing by my corporate fortiguard.
Eduard 4y ago
Scribbn is a great app that does speech-to-text for WhatsApp and other messaging apps whenever I can't listen to voice messages, e.g. during meetings - or when I'm just not in the mood for listening to voices. https://www.scribbn.de/ https://www.scribbn.de/
candace20 4y ago
Labo333 4y ago
I can appreciate the effort and think it is an amazing idea. However, why build that into Signal which is E2EE and use an API for the speech-to-text? It would be much more logical to do it with Messenger (for example by injecting JS with Tampermonkey) or to use a local model to perform S2T.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
whatsthatabout 4y ago
This is really cool! It's one of the features I miss in every single chat app. The fact that its done locally here is a nice privacy bonus.
- lhoff 4y ago
  Slack has that feature. If you get a voice message you can either play it or display the transcript. Although I don't think it does it offline. Edit: only on paid plans
Coxa 4y ago
This is such a neat solution to a problem I am facing every day. Especially in an office environment it's simply not feasible to listen to voice messages. What ends up happening is that they simply get burried under all the "normal" messages and forgotten.
- StrangeSound 4y ago
  It might not be immediately obvious, but on WhatsApp at least, you can hold your phone to your ear and the voice clip will play as if you're on a phone call. I am making an assumption that Signal would be the same.
  - usrme 4y ago
    I always thought this was an iPhone feature, not strictly WhatsApp. Back when I used WhatsApp I tried this with my Android phone and couldn't get it to work. Definitely possible that I overlooked something crucial though.
nudpiedo 4y ago
that's the future, deliver more and more open ai models as if they were just software libraries and go back to native offline capable apps.
your_challenger 4y ago
Amazing! Every chat app needs this. I use WhatsApp daily and this is in dire need.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  I would settle for an option to automatically reject voice messages.
  - craggyjaggy 4y ago
    You'd miss so much important stuff though! "Uhhh yeah so I wanted to reach out to ask you about, you know how last week we - hold on dude I'm sending a voice message - yeah so uhhh what was I saying..."
gr2zr4 4y ago
That's amazing!!! Is there any possibility it's gonna been added to signal desktop?
starsep 4y ago
Great feature. Good luck with making it production ready and merging it upstream if you intend to do that :)
jiehong 4y ago
WeChat give this by default (but not for all languages and you cannot change the language of a given voice message). But it’s so slow because it does it in real time, so a 1 minute voice message (the maximum length in WeChat) takes 1 minute to transcribe. I still don’t understand why the OS doesn’t provide that function in all instant message app: just show “transcribe with Siri” on any audio message on any app and be done. At least as an accessibility setting for those who cannot even listen to those messages.
totetsu 4y ago
> I get why people send voice messages: it saves their time, allowing them to record their voice while doing other things. Is that the case? I know in signal on android, the voice typing features of keyboards are disabled as a security feature because these leak your message to google ASR apis etc. I use voice typing to save time and sore thumbs tapping on a touch screen. I can see how when that's disabled people might just record a message and send the audio instead. Maybe the solution here is to avoid the voice message all together and enable offline voice typing in the first place.
- grandchild 4y ago
  While I love the project linked here, "voice" messages allow you to do more than talk. I've sent messages where I'm singing, or also where I'm reading a book chapter. It'd be sad if those things weren't possible anymore.
- bjord 4y ago
  just checked and google-based voice typing seems to work fine in Signal for me (though I don't use it)
stavros 4y ago
> I get why people send voice messages: it saves their time, allowing them to record their voice while doing other things. This is true, it does save their time, at the expense of my time. Now I have to spend two minutes listening to your pauses while trying to collect your thoughts, rather than spend 15 seconds reading the final thing. I also need to make sure I'm in an environment where it's socially acceptable to listen (ie when I'm alone, or have headphones in), so it's much more of a burden to the recipient.
- i13e 4y ago
  Don't these problems also exist for the sender (more time consuming, socially acceptable environment to send, etc). IME I have found texting more time consuming and personally prefer calling people, though that's a bit old hat now.
  - stavros 4y ago
    They do, but the sender-pays model aligns incentives better than both-pay.
- ticviking 4y ago
  I love the ability to have an async conversation this way though. Take the time to pause and collect your thoughts before sending the message. It'll help you build the same habit when you have in person conversations as well.
- jsiepkes 4y ago
  Exactly. It often takes weeks for me to reply to a voice message. Simply because I don't feel like listening to it. Sometimes I don't reply at all and never listen to it. My time is important too you know.
- asenna 4y ago
  I agree with some of the issues but one good feature I like - just listen to the voice note at 2x the speed. And usually people are concise with their thoughts.
meibo 4y ago
For everyone on Android: a lot of Android phones have an auto-subtitling feature now that you can turn on by tapping the volume buttons, and pressing the captions icon. Works great for things like this, apparently it's what they built it for. https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9350862?hl=en https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9350...
- dexterp37 4y ago
  TIL, thanks for sharing! My phone is not supported (Fairphone 3+), sadly. While such a feature would definitely help with the transcription of a message, unless the transcribed text is stored within the app it would not help with searching the messages.
- ezfe 4y ago
  And iOS 16 will also have this feature coming this fall, can be linked to a triple-click of the side button
- Sunspark 4y ago
  I use an older version of Android so I don't have this feature.. but you can still work around it by using live transcribe or otter.ai instead, if it plays through the speakers it will be heard (they will not work with headphones connected). These machine-based apps are a blessing because previously, it was necessary to ask someone else to tell you what the message said, whether a relay operator or in person. They're certainly good enough to let you know instantly whether it's spam, a wrong number or something important.
- sofixa 4y ago
  TIL, never knew what that button is for, thank you!
- carlob 4y ago
  Unfortunately English only... I use https://t.me/transcriber_bot https://t.me/transcriber_bot god knows what they do with my personal stuff though...
HidyBush 4y ago
Why is nobody talking about how many situations will arise where one person sends a voice message with a certain tone only to be completely misrepresented by someone using this context-killing feature?
- brigandish 4y ago
  I would guess that if something seems rude or off then they might actually play the voice message.
giantg2 4y ago
I'm going to have to look into this. I've been working with Pocket Sphinx and the accuracy has been terrible (hasn't gotten a single word right). Anyone know if this approach works OK with background noises?

191 points by dexterp37 4y ago

Texts.com supports offline audio transcription for all platforms. They say it's powered by Apple's speech recognition APIs.

artificialLimbs 4y ago

Hmm.. site blocked for phishing by my corporate fortiguard.

Eduard 4y ago

Scribbn is a great app that does speech-to-text for WhatsApp and other messaging apps whenever I can't listen to voice messages, e.g. during meetings - or when I'm just not in the mood for listening to voices. https://www.scribbn.de/ https://www.scribbn.de/

candace20 4y ago

Labo333 4y ago

I can appreciate the effort and think it is an amazing idea. However, why build that into Signal which is E2EE and use an API for the speech-to-text? It would be much more logical to do it with Messenger (for example by injecting JS with Tampermonkey) or to use a local model to perform S2T.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

whatsthatabout 4y ago

This is really cool! It's one of the features I miss in every single chat app. The fact that its done locally here is a nice privacy bonus.

lhoff 4y ago
Slack has that feature. If you get a voice message you can either play it or display the transcript. Although I don't think it does it offline. Edit: only on paid plans

Coxa 4y ago

This is such a neat solution to a problem I am facing every day. Especially in an office environment it's simply not feasible to listen to voice messages. What ends up happening is that they simply get burried under all the "normal" messages and forgotten.

StrangeSound 4y ago
It might not be immediately obvious, but on WhatsApp at least, you can hold your phone to your ear and the voice clip will play as if you're on a phone call. I am making an assumption that Signal would be the same.
- usrme 4y ago
  I always thought this was an iPhone feature, not strictly WhatsApp. Back when I used WhatsApp I tried this with my Android phone and couldn't get it to work. Definitely possible that I overlooked something crucial though.

nudpiedo 4y ago

that's the future, deliver more and more open ai models as if they were just software libraries and go back to native offline capable apps.

your_challenger 4y ago

Amazing! Every chat app needs this. I use WhatsApp daily and this is in dire need.

gpderetta 4y ago
I would settle for an option to automatically reject voice messages.
- craggyjaggy 4y ago
  You'd miss so much important stuff though! "Uhhh yeah so I wanted to reach out to ask you about, you know how last week we - hold on dude I'm sending a voice message - yeah so uhhh what was I saying..."

gr2zr4 4y ago

That's amazing!!! Is there any possibility it's gonna been added to signal desktop?

starsep 4y ago

Great feature. Good luck with making it production ready and merging it upstream if you intend to do that :)

jiehong 4y ago

WeChat give this by default (but not for all languages and you cannot change the language of a given voice message). But it’s so slow because it does it in real time, so a 1 minute voice message (the maximum length in WeChat) takes 1 minute to transcribe. I still don’t understand why the OS doesn’t provide that function in all instant message app: just show “transcribe with Siri” on any audio message on any app and be done. At least as an accessibility setting for those who cannot even listen to those messages.

totetsu 4y ago

> I get why people send voice messages: it saves their time, allowing them to record their voice while doing other things. Is that the case? I know in signal on android, the voice typing features of keyboards are disabled as a security feature because these leak your message to google ASR apis etc. I use voice typing to save time and sore thumbs tapping on a touch screen. I can see how when that's disabled people might just record a message and send the audio instead. Maybe the solution here is to avoid the voice message all together and enable offline voice typing in the first place.

grandchild 4y ago
While I love the project linked here, "voice" messages allow you to do more than talk. I've sent messages where I'm singing, or also where I'm reading a book chapter. It'd be sad if those things weren't possible anymore.
bjord 4y ago
just checked and google-based voice typing seems to work fine in Signal for me (though I don't use it)

stavros 4y ago

> I get why people send voice messages: it saves their time, allowing them to record their voice while doing other things. This is true, it does save their time, at the expense of my time. Now I have to spend two minutes listening to your pauses while trying to collect your thoughts, rather than spend 15 seconds reading the final thing. I also need to make sure I'm in an environment where it's socially acceptable to listen (ie when I'm alone, or have headphones in), so it's much more of a burden to the recipient.

i13e 4y ago
Don't these problems also exist for the sender (more time consuming, socially acceptable environment to send, etc). IME I have found texting more time consuming and personally prefer calling people, though that's a bit old hat now.
- stavros 4y ago
  They do, but the sender-pays model aligns incentives better than both-pay.
ticviking 4y ago
I love the ability to have an async conversation this way though. Take the time to pause and collect your thoughts before sending the message. It'll help you build the same habit when you have in person conversations as well.
jsiepkes 4y ago
Exactly. It often takes weeks for me to reply to a voice message. Simply because I don't feel like listening to it. Sometimes I don't reply at all and never listen to it. My time is important too you know.
asenna 4y ago
I agree with some of the issues but one good feature I like - just listen to the voice note at 2x the speed. And usually people are concise with their thoughts.

meibo 4y ago

For everyone on Android: a lot of Android phones have an auto-subtitling feature now that you can turn on by tapping the volume buttons, and pressing the captions icon. Works great for things like this, apparently it's what they built it for. https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9350862?hl=en https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9350...

dexterp37 4y ago
TIL, thanks for sharing! My phone is not supported (Fairphone 3+), sadly. While such a feature would definitely help with the transcription of a message, unless the transcribed text is stored within the app it would not help with searching the messages.
ezfe 4y ago
And iOS 16 will also have this feature coming this fall, can be linked to a triple-click of the side button
Sunspark 4y ago
I use an older version of Android so I don't have this feature.. but you can still work around it by using live transcribe or otter.ai instead, if it plays through the speakers it will be heard (they will not work with headphones connected). These machine-based apps are a blessing because previously, it was necessary to ask someone else to tell you what the message said, whether a relay operator or in person. They're certainly good enough to let you know instantly whether it's spam, a wrong number or something important.
sofixa 4y ago
TIL, never knew what that button is for, thank you!
carlob 4y ago
Unfortunately English only... I use https://t.me/transcriber_bot https://t.me/transcriber_bot god knows what they do with my personal stuff though...

HidyBush 4y ago

Why is nobody talking about how many situations will arise where one person sends a voice message with a certain tone only to be completely misrepresented by someone using this context-killing feature?

brigandish 4y ago
I would guess that if something seems rude or off then they might actually play the voice message.

giantg2 4y ago

I'm going to have to look into this. I've been working with Pocket Sphinx and the accuracy has been terrible (hasn't gotten a single word right). Anyone know if this approach works OK with background noises?